Since leaving the UFC several years ago, Strikeforce lightweight ace Josh Thomson has built a reputation as one of the best lightweights operating outside of the world’s largest organization. Since losing his title in December of last year, Thomson has been looking to take fights with anyone willing to step in the cage with him. Tomorrow night, he will face one of the best international lightweights of the past five years in American Top Team standout Gesias “JZ” Cavalcante.

Ahead of his main card battle with Cavalcante, Thomson spoke with Tapology at length and discussed everything from his opponent to his attempt to enter Bellator’s Season 2 Lightweight Tournament.Tapology: How did the fight with JZ Cavalcante come about?

Thomson: I wasn’t really involved in the discussions, but I’m one of the only guys in Strikeforce who is willing to fight the top guys. I think these other fighters need to come to reality; no promotions let you pick and choose who you fight. Lyle Beerbohm wants to fight Gilbert [Melendez]. Well obviously you want to fight Gilbert; he’s the champion.

You can’t do that stuff without going through the top people to get there. He has been offered fights with Justin Wilcox and myself, and he keeps turning them down. A lot of these guys are trying to hand pick their opponents and it doesn’t work that way. There is a myth going around that they think they are going to make more money because they are fighting for a title. Dude, you’re signed to a contract, it’s not going to change anything.

It’s a huge misconception among both fighters and fans. These jerk-offs on Facebook think we’re rich or something. It’s great to be involved in all of this PR, but we don’t make any money off of that stuff. If you look at what Anderson Silva made and what Chael made, there is a huge difference.

Some of these younger fighters need to just step up and fight. Josh Koscheck has proven that if you lose one, you just come back and fight again.

Tapology: I think fans would rather see that type of mentality. A lot of fans get annoyed when major champions are only fighting a couple of times per year.

Thomson: Koscheck lost those fights to Thiago Alves and Paulo Thiago, but now he’s a better fighter because of those losses. Like I keep telling people, I could walk into this fight on Saturday night and fight the best fight of my life and still lose to this guy. Any of us top lightweights could beat each other on any given night.

Tapology: We also saw—in your last fight against Pat Healy—that anybody can lose on any given night. You won that fight, but it wasn’t easy, and most fans expected you to run right through him.

Thomson: Right, and another thing is that three rounds are hardly enough to see who the better fighter is. I wish there was a way to make four-round non-title fights, but I know it would make it harder for the judges. Realistically, if you get a takedown at the end of a round, you’re going to win the round, so when you know that, you can really fight conservatively in three-round fights. Like we saw with the Sonnen/Silva fight, that pattern’s tough to keep up in longer fights.

Tapology: How would you propose to change the current round/time structure?

Thomson: I think that if you made the rounds a little bit shorter and added a fourth round, you’d get more action out of the fighters and you’d see who the better fighter is more often than not. If you give the fighters a minute break after fighting for four minutes, it would change a lot. I like The Ultimate Fighter, where they do two rounds and then a third-round tiebreaker. I think they should do that with three-round fights and add a fourth in the event of a close fight. Then the winner of that round should win the fight.

Tapology: Back to the topic at hand, how do you feel you match up with JZ?

Thomson: He came off of this injury and fought Kikuno and had a really tough fight. He’s beaten a lot of good guys, so it’s going to be interesting to see which JZ shows up in this fight. I know how it is to fight with injuries. This camp has been a real emotional roller coaster, dealing with injuries from previous fights, but I’m sure he’s going through the same things.

When I broke my ankle, I kept training sooner than I should have and kept getting injured, so I ended up sitting out for 15 months. Now that my ankle’s fixed, I’m dealing with all of the other injuries that have accumulated since then. We’re both coming off of multiple injuries and we’re in a similar position, so we’re just both trying to get to the fight and get the W.

We’re completely different styles. My stand-up is more sticking and moving and trying to beat him to the punch, while he has more of a brawler style, but I sure as hell don’t want to let him get on top and do damage. Lately I haven’t seen him very aggressive in the later rounds, so my objective is to really push him to his max.

Tapology: Should you defeat JZ, will you be lobbying for a third fight with Melendez or something else?

Thomson: It depends on how I perform. If I perform shitty then no I probably won’t be ready for Gilbert and won’t want the fight, but if they offer it to me, I’m not in the business of turning down fights.

Tapology: You guys have been in the shadow of the UFC’s lightweight division for a long time. Since BJ Penn has lost two in a row to Frankie Edgar, however, many fans’ perspectives have begun to shift a bit. Do you think his loss of the title demonstrates how competitive this whole division is, or do you think that has nothing to do with it?

Thomson: I don’t think it has anything to do with Penn losing. I think Gilbert, myself—if you take top fighters from other organizations you will realize that we are some of the best. I think Aoki is great in a ring, but he didn’t do so great in the cage. I’ve trained with Frankie and I’ve trained with BJ and they’re both phenomenal fighters; I can’t say anything bad about them. I thought one day Frankie would be the champion, but I never thought he would beat BJ. When I trained with him he was also smaller.

There are a couple guys in the UFC that you see winning a lot—Kenny Florian is a great fighter who people say can’t win big fights—but I don’t think that’s true. There are a lot of great fighters in the division, but styles make match-ups and I think more than ten fighters deserve to be in the discussion of the top fighters. A good example is that I think Edgar can’t beat Gray Maynard, but I think Maynard can’t beat Penn.

My problem is when you have guys like Ben Henderson ranked in the top ten when he hasn’t beaten anybody in the UFC or in Strikeforce, the first and second best divisions. I think Henderson, Donald Cerrone, and Jamie Varner are very talented, but if you put them in there with the top eight guys in the UFC, they’re going to get washed out. How you have that guy ranked in the top ten above me and JZ, I don’t know. The bottom line is we all fight in different organizations so we can’t fight each other.

Tapology: Before I let you go, there has been a lot of talk lately about co-promotional efforts between Strikeforce, Dream, and Bellator. Do you think those talks are realistic for next year?

Thomson: Absolutely. Actually, after the Melendez fight [December, 2009] I asked if I could be entered into the Bellator Lightweight Tournament with Roger Huerta and Eddie Alvarez, but contracts didn’t get worked out in time. I’m open to anything.

[...] when necessary. Strikeforce fighter Josh Thomson recently answered questions for Tapology, and had this to say when asked about Strikeforce, DREAM, and Bellator co-promotions in 2011: “Actually, after the [...]